Sunshine Apps Track Industry Payments to Providers

Abstract

Two new smartphone apps aim to help log drug, device, and diagnostic manufacturer payments to doctors and other health care providers, as called for by the Affordable Care Act. To promote transparency in relationships between providers and industry, the act requires that manufacturers track and report payments for consulting, honoraria, and more. Originally known as the Sunshine Act, the effort is now called the Open Payments Program by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. While physicians are not required to inventory anything of value they receive from manufacturers, CMS and many medical professional societies advise that they do so. The app for physicians – Open Payments for Physicians – is designed to help doctors keep tabs on all their transactions in real time. Users can manually enter all the information regarding a particular transaction – for example, the receipt of a grant payment or a gift that's worth more than $10. The app is free and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store or from Google Play. CMS also created an app for industry representatives to use (Open Payments for Industry). Industry users and physician users can exchange information with their apps. By using a built-in QR (quick response) code reader, the manufacturer can transfer a record of a transaction to the physician for review, according to the agency. In a blog post, CMS Program Integrity Director Dr. Peter Budetti said the agency's “foray into mobile technology is about providing user-friendly tools for doctors, manufacturers, and others in the health care industry to use in working with us to implement the law in a smart way.” The idea is that physicians can use the records contained in the app to compare what's reported by manufacturers to CMS. There is a 45-day lag between when the data are reported to CMS and posted publicly. Physicians have that window to challenge the reports before they are posted on the Open Payments website. Corrections can be made later, but the erroneous data probably will be public for awhile. The first year of the program is somewhat forgiving. Data collected beginning Aug. 1, 2013, won't be public until September 2014. The apps can't be used to transfer data to CMS directly, said the agency, which added that although it developed the apps, it will not “validate the accuracy of data stored in the apps, nor will it be responsible for protecting data stored in the apps.” Dr. Daniel Haimowitz, a medical director in Levittown, Pa., commented: “I don't agree that interaction with pharma compromises physician integrity, but I recognize this may color patient perception. Even if technology use leads to twisting ourselves in knots to comply with flawed reasoning, it raises questions: Is accepting industry gifts unethical? Will busy practitioners have time to record and challenge reports? Will that call more attention to us? Will patients care?”